Years of preparation for revolution (1903–1905). Everywhere the approach of a great storm is felt. In all classes there is ferment and preparation. Abroad, the émigré press poses theoretically all the fundamental questions of revolution. Representatives of three principal classes, three main political currents—the liberal-bourgeois, the petty-bourgeois-democratic (disguised under the signboards of "social-democratic" and "social-revolutionary" tendencies{3})—and the proletarian-revolutionary, through the fiercest struggle of programmatic and tactical views anticipate and prepare the coming open struggle of classes. All the questions for which armed struggle of the masses took place in 1905–1907 and in 1917–1920, can (and must) be traced, in embryonic form, in the press of that time. And between the three main directions, of course, there are any number of intermediate, transitional, half-measure formations. More precisely: in the struggle of press organs, parties, factions, groups, those ideological-political directions crystallize which are genuinely class directions; classes forge for themselves the appropriate ideological-political weapon for the coming battles.

Years of revolution (1905–1907). All classes come forward openly. All programmatic and tactical views are tested by the action of the masses. Strike struggle of unprecedented breadth and acuteness in world history. The growth of economic strikes into political strikes and political strikes into uprising. Practical testing of the relationship between the leading proletariat and the led, wavering, unstable peasantry. The birth, in the spontaneous development of struggle, of the Soviet form of organization. The disputes of that time about the significance of the Soviets anticipate the great struggle of 1917–1920. The alternation of parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle, the tactics of boycott of parliamentarism with the tactics of participation in parliamentarism, legal and illegal forms of struggle, as well as their mutual relationship and connections—all this is distinguished by remarkable richness of content. Each month of this period equaled, in the sense of teaching the fundamentals of political science—both the masses and the leaders, both classes and parties—a year of "peaceful" "constitutional" development. Without the "general rehearsal" of 1905, the victory of the October Revolution of 1917 would have been impossible.

Years of reaction (1907–1910). Tsarism won. All revolutionary and oppositional parties were smashed. Decline, demoralization, splits, disarray, renegadism, pornography in place of politics. Intensification of the attraction to philosophical idealism; mysticism as a cloak for counter-revolutionary sentiments. But at the same time, it is precisely this great defeat that gives to revolutionary parties and the revolutionary class a genuine and most useful lesson—a lesson of historical dialectics, a lesson in understanding, ability, and the art of conducting political struggle. Friends are known in misfortune. Defeated armies learn well.

The victorious tsarism was forced to rapidly destroy the remnants of pre-bourgeois, patriarchal life in Russia. Her bourgeois development advanced with remarkable speed. Non-class, supraclass illusions, illusions about the possibility of avoiding capitalism were scattered to dust. Class struggle comes forward in a completely new way and all the more distinctly.

Revolutionary parties had to continue learning. They learned to go on the offensive. Now they had to understand that this science must be supplemented with the science of how to retreat correctly. They had to understand—and the revolutionary class on its own bitter experience learns to understand—that one cannot win without learning correct offense and correct retreat. Of all the defeated oppositional and revolutionary parties, the Bolsheviks retreated in the greatest order, with the least damage to their "army," with the greatest preservation of its core, with the smallest (in depth and incurability) splits, with the least demoralization, with the greatest ability to resume work in the broadest, most correct and most energetic manner. And the Bolsheviks achieved this only because they mercilessly exposed and drove out revolutionary phrasemakers who did not want to understand that retreat was necessary, that one must know how to retreat, that one must necessarily learn to work legally even in the most reactionary parliaments, in the most reactionary professional, cooperative, insurance and similar organizations.

Years of rise (1910–1914). At first the rise was incredibly slow, then, after the Lena events of 1912, somewhat faster. Overcoming unprecedented difficulties, the Bolsheviks pushed back the Mensheviks, whose role as agents of the bourgeoisie in the labor movement was perfectly well understood by the entire bourgeoisie after 1905, and whom therefore in a thousand ways all the bourgeoisie supported against the Bolsheviks. But the Bolsheviks would never have succeeded in this had they not pursued the correct tactics of combining illegal work with the obligatory utilization of "legal opportunities." In the most reactionary Duma, the Bolsheviks captured the entire workers' curia for themselves.

The First World Imperialist War (1914–1917). Legal parliamentarism, under conditions of extreme reaction from the "parliament," renders the most useful service to the party of the revolutionary proletariat, the Bolsheviks. The Bolshevik deputies go to Siberia{4}. In the émigré press all shades of views of social-imperialism, social-chauvinism, social-patriotism, inconsistent and consistent internationalism, pacifism and revolutionary negation of pacifist illusions find with us their complete expression. The learned fools and old women of the Second International, who sneered disdainfully and haughtily at the abundance of "factions" in Russian socialism and the bitterness of struggle between them, were unable, when war deprived the vaunted "legality" in all advanced countries, to organize even approximately such free (illegal) exchange of views and such free (illegal) working out of correct views as Russian revolutionaries organized in Switzerland and in a number of other countries. It is precisely for this reason that both the direct social-patriots and the "Kautskyites" of all countries proved to be the worst traitors of the proletariat. And if Bolshevism succeeded in winning in 1917–1920, then one of the principal causes of this victory is that Bolshevism already from the end of 1914 mercilessly exposed the abomination, vileness and baseness of social-chauvinism and "Kautskianism" (to which corresponds Longetism{5} in France, the views of the leaders of the Independent Labour Party{6} and Fabians{7} in England, Turati in Italy, etc.), while the masses subsequently on their own experience became more and more convinced of the correctness of the Bolshevik views.

The Second Revolution in Russia (from February to October 1917). The incredible antiquity and obsolescence of tsarism created (with the aid of the blows and burdens of the most agonizing war) an incredible destructive force directed against it. In a matter of days Russia transformed itself into a democratic bourgeois republic, more free—in the circumstances of war—than any country in the world. The government came to be created by the leaders of oppositional and revolutionary parties—as in the most "strictly-parliamentary" republics, and the title of leader of an oppositional party in parliament, though the most reactionary one at that, facilitated the subsequent role of such a leader in the revolution.

The Mensheviks and the "Socialist-Revolutionaries" in a matter of weeks brilliantly mastered all the methods and manners, arguments and sophisms of the European heroes of the Second International, the ministerialists{8} and other opportunist rabble. All that we now read about the Scheidemanns and Noskes, Kautsky and Hilferding, Renner and Austerlitz, Otto Bauer and Fritz Adler, about Turati and Longe, about the Fabians and leaders of the Independent Labour Party in England, all this seems to us (and in fact is) a tedious repetition, a reprise of a familiar and old motif. All this we had already seen in the Mensheviks. History played a trick and forced the opportunists of a backward country to anticipate the opportunists of a number of advanced countries.

If all the heroes of the Second International suffered bankruptcy, brought shame upon themselves on the question of the significance and role of the Soviets and Soviet power, if particularly "brilliantly" they brought shame upon themselves and became entangled on this question—the leaders of the three very important parties that have now left the Second International (namely, the German Independent Social-Democratic Party{9}, the French Longetist, and the English Independent Labour Party), if all of them proved to be slaves to the prejudices of petty-bourgeois democracy (quite in the spirit of the petty bourgeois of 1848, who called themselves "social-democrats"), then on the example of the Mensheviks we have already seen all this. History played such a trick that in Russia in 1905 the Soviets were born, that the Mensheviks falsified them in February–October 1917, going bankrupt as a result of their inability to understand their role and significance, and that now throughout the whole world the idea of Soviet power has been born, spreading with unprecedented speed among the proletariat of all countries, while the old heroes of the Second International everywhere bankrupt themselves in precisely the same way thanks to their inability to understand the role and significance of the Soviets as our Mensheviks. Experience has proved that on certain very essential questions of proletarian revolution all countries will inevitably have to do what Russia has done.

The Bolsheviks began their victorious struggle against the parliamentary (in fact) bourgeois republic and against the Mensheviks very cautiously and prepared for it in no simple manner—contrary to those views which are not infrequently encountered now in Europe and America. We did not call at the beginning of the indicated period for the overthrow of the government, but explained the impossibility of its overthrow without preliminary changes in the composition and mood of the Soviets. We did not proclaim a boycott of the bourgeois parliament, the Constituent Assembly, but said—from our party's April (1917) conference{10} we said officially in the name of the party, that a bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly is better than the same republic without a Constituent Assembly, and that a "workers' and peasants'" Soviet republic is better than any bourgeois-democratic, parliamentary republic. Without such cautious, thorough, circumspect and prolonged preparation we could neither have won victory in October 1917 nor held that victory.